Dave Ross made me almost swerve into a median this morning with this brilliant little rant on my radio:
During the campaign, the President talked of Social Security reform in vague terms, probably because even HE couldn't make the numbers add up. NO cut in benefits, NO tax increases, while at the same time, letting young people put part of their payroll tax into private accounts - it defied the laws of arithmetic.
A lot of us have been waiting to hear the magical formula that would make this work without putting us even further into hock to foreign countries.
I mean, this year, China alone will lend us an amount of money about equal to the annual cost of the War in Iraq.
Anyway, with the campaign over, the White House decided it was time to start floating trial balloons on Social Security reform, and the first one is - surprise - to cut benefits to generations X and Y. And not little teensy weensy cuts - BIG cuts.
Social Security benefits for younger workers would be cut by between 9 and 45 percent from what they could have expected under the old system. The gap would be filled by those new private accounts, with presumably boffo returns.
But according to some projections, when you add up those boffo returns, and subtract the cuts, what you end up is about the same amount of money as if nothing had been changed.
Unless, of course, they pick the next Microsoft before anybody else. But see, you can play that game NOW if you want, without touching Social Security.
Fortunately, by the time the X and Y kids face the consequences of these reforms, the politicians responsible will be long gone - and happily collecting on their own, quite generous, federal retirement plan. Which, by the way, will apparently NOT be reformed.
Funny how that works.